NATIONAL REPORT

Chronicle Staff and News Services

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, August 8, 2002

CHINESE WANT HELP OF U.S. IN FINDING GIRL

Chinese officials in San Francisco say the State Department has yet to respond to their requests for help in locating Jia Yukun, the 12-year-old student who disappeared from San Francisco International Airport last week and resurfaced at the home of relatives in Massachusetts.

Even though numerous news reports have mentioned where and with whom the girl is staying, it is unlikely that Chinese officials will attempt to contact her without the assistance of the U.S. government, said Lei Hong, a spokesman for the Chinese consul general in San Francisco.

Chinese officials "would like to get to know her situation and her plan for the future," but U.S. officials have so far not "given us a clue" as to her whereabouts, Hong said.

Yukun was on her way to Space Camp in Alabama, traveling on a 15-day tourist visa. The visa will expire in eight days, and she must apply for political asylum by Aug. 15 or leave the country.

Final Energy Department regulations, obtained by the Associated Press and expected to be issued today, instruct contractors not to contest medical panels' findings that workers' illnesses are related to job exposure.

The new rules reverse a decades-old policy and could affect more than 12, 000 workers currently seeking help from the Energy Department in getting compensation.

ONLINE GRADUATE TEST ENDED OVER CHEATING

An undetermined number of students in China, Taiwan and South Korea were able to raise their scores substantially last year on the verbal part of the most widely used entrance exam to American graduate schools by logging on to Web sites in those countries that post questions and answers memorized by previous test takers, test administrators said on Wednesday.

After uncovering the Chinese- and Korean-language Web sites, and assessing their effect on test scores, administrators have suspended the electronic version of the Graduate Record Examinations, taken by 55,000 students annually in those countries since the late 1990s. Because the tests were given six days a week, the questions were regularly reused.

Now, the GRE will be given in those three countries only two days a year and on paper; test questions will be used only once. Officials with the Educational Testing Service said they had not found a similar problem in any other country.

BAD PETITIONS MAY BAR D.C. MAYOR FROM BALLOT

Washington -- The D.C. Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that Mayor Anthony Williams' nominating petitions were so rife with forgeries and apparent fraud that the city's election board was justified in barring him from the Democratic primary ballot.

The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel sent a jolt of urgency into the mayor's fledgling efforts to mount a write-in candidacy for the Sept. 10 Democratic primary. He continues to enjoy a vast advantage in name recognition and money over the four candidates on the Democratic ballot, including a bugle- playing exotic dancer and a former City Council member once convicted of biting a tow truck driver.